Dissecting Honeycomb Part 2 – A deep look at Android 3.0 for developers

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By now, you have probably heard that Android 3.0 is on the way. The Software Development Kit (SDK) has given us some insight into the features and benefits to the upcoming upgrade to the Android OS, and its support for many different types of Android devices. Android tablets and phones will soon be either arriving with 3.0 or getting an update with these enhancements. So, aside from all the new stuff we covered in our look at Honeycomb for Users, what benefits are there for developers?

User Interface

It’s the lonely life of a developer to plug away on the functional goodies in the background, when all the users care about are the pretty colors and soft corners of their screens. Fortunately, the latest tools in the Android SDK have taken steps to make it easier for developers to quickly change elements of an app or widget. Since there’s a lot of different screens out there, Google needed to implement a way to quickly test new ideas that might look or work better for the user. This was accomplished with a revamped UI builder that includes things like In-Editor previews, Drag and Drop improvements, and a UI visualizers that are independent of the piece you are working on.

These changes will make it easy for developers to update their apps to this next version, and allow for the changes to be more meaningful than just a version update.

Planning for Multiple Processors

Dual core processing for mobile devices is finally here, and it’s vital that not only the operating system, but the apps within it are optimized to take advantage of that. That noted, it’s not a requirement for an app developer to do anything to benefit from multiple processors.

Natively, Android will run the garbage collector on one core and an app on another. However, the tools are there to utilize both cores for your app, and to benefit from the performance gains that will occur. This will allow for app developers of every skill level to take advantage of the new hardware and also ensures that there won’t be any issues that remind us of when 64-bit Windows first came out.

Games!

I think it’s unreasonable to look at any of the current mobile operating systems as gaming consoles, but that does not mean that they are not heading in that direction. More and more we are seeing huge sales and top apps coming from game developers on mobile platforms. It’s only logical that the mobile platforms would step up and make it easier for new exciting features and better looking games to come to their house to play.

The Honeycomb SDK includes new 2D and 3D rendering systems across either the entire app or specific places within. That’s great, in my opinion, but not a good as hardware acceleration. Combined with what has already been seen with the symmetric multiprocessing kernel alongside, we can expect some great battery performance from new devices.

Multimedia

Games aren’t the only thing we care about. Music, movies, and images are important as well. And not just on the device or network, but everywhere we go. We know Google is a big fan of the “cloud” and they have delivered with support for several types of web streaming technologies. From HTML streaming to media file transfer, and “pluggable DRM frameworks” to help keep content safe (Are you reading this, Netflix? Hulu? Step up, guys!), the tools are there to make sure any media provider will be completely comfortable delivering their content to the Androidy masses.

Business Solutions

In the last version release, we saw Google make huge strides to ensure Android was ready for the business world. Creating administrator controls was a great first step, but they aren’t done. Password expiration and encrypted storage tools will allow any organization to give Android devices to their employees and ensure the devices will be both safe to store critical information on and secure in that in case the employee is “no longer with the company” they aren’t giving that user a free ride.

External Device Support

Not every mobile accessory was built with smartphones in mind. For example that Bluetooth headset that fits your ear just right might not have all the same bells and whistles as the latest BlueAnt headset, so you may be missing a few things you really like to do, like initiating a call or controlling the volume. Honeycomb adds support for legacy BT devices. Many feature phones have unsecure bluetooth connections for “dumb” bluetooth devices (speakers for example) and smartphones as a rule do not support them (unsecured connections being, by nature, unsafe) but Honeycomb adds support for those devices.

The tools are all available in the Android SDK for you to download and explore for free. Additionally, keep an eye on the Android Developers Blog for everything from tips and tricks in the SDK to functionality warnings and suggestions from members of the Android Development team.